Last One Standing is fundamentally a game about competition.
Most roleplaying games are all about cooperation – you and your allies banding
together to defeat the enemy – but in Last One Standing, cooperation isn’t
guaranteed – it’s something you have to fight for. This shifts the entire focus
of the game, bringing a unique gameplay experience that’s intense, cutthroat,
and unlike anything you’ve ever played before!

What does the game
play like?Last One Standing follows the philosophy of ‘Play to find
out what happens’. Because of this, every game plays wildly differently despite
each time having a similar premise. Think of it like a board game – even though
the board is the same every time, the way the players interact and the way the
strategies and random elements of the game unfold makes each game distinctly
memorable. Except that unlike a board game, Last One Standing, being an RPG, is
endlessly customizable, making each experience highly distinct and unique.

Some of the contestants you'll be playing as - or against!

How does Last One Standing manage to be so low prep?Last One Standing includes a lot of pre-made content – 100 pre-statted
and illustrated contestants, 6 gorgeous and fully detailed maps, 6 directors
and their full suites of devious events, and over 200 items ranging from the mundane (your knives and your bows) to the bizarre (ever tried to kill someone with a sack of marbles?).

By combining a huge variety of content built to be used
flexibly instead of a linear scenario or improvising everything, the game can
be deep, fair, and easy to run, without losing the spontaneity that makes
playing tabletop RPGs so great.

What’s the setting of
Last One Standing like?The game is set in a dystopian future where young adults are
forced to fight to the death, inspired by a few popular stories you've probably heard of. The default setting of the game has a bit of dark
humor in it, to emphasize the absurdity of idyllic happy families sitting down
and watching real people fight to the death. But of course the game can be as
light-hearted or dead serious as your group wants it to be.

Also, because the game is, itself, about a game, it allows
the GM to intervene directly in the role of the director – the shadowy figure
who oversees the game. Through this, they can keep the action moving and
constantly drive the characters towards interesting scenarios and away from
boring discussions of how best to arrange people’s inventories.

Escape is also a possibility – although a tough one. This
makes for interesting play, as players aren’t being helped along by the ‘plot’
to escape – they’ll escape or die trying on their own merits. Because of this,
the players face the same dilemma as their characters – take a big risk for a
big payoff, or go the easy way and play along by killing their fellows? It’s entirely up to you– and finding out is what makes the game great!

Not everyone in the competition is...well-adjusted.

What system does Last
One Standing run on? Last One Standing runs on a heavily modified version of the
system first used in the game Apocalypse World by Vincent Baker, which is also
used (in modified form) for several other great games such as Dungeon World,
Monsterhearts, and many more.

The system’s core advantages are its ease of use and the way
it generates consistently interesting and unexpected results – rolls aren’t
merely a success or failure, but spin off into a variety of interesting
outcomes. Most of the modifications made for Last One Standing revolve around
streamlining the system even further and removing some of the ambiguity from
the results. This serves to make the system better for quick and fair
competitive play, while still leaving enough of the unexpected in to make for
interesting results with every roll.

What will the rewards look like?The book itself will be a 6x9 perfect bound softcover with
B&W interiors.

The shirt and pins will look like the mockups, above.

How complete is the game so far? The game is fully written, designed, and tested (although you can always use more testing!). As of now, what’s missing is the art and additional layout to make the game look as nice as possible, as well as funds for a physical print run.

The art for the final game will include interior illustrations for each chapter, six full-color arena maps, as well as art for all the directors and for the full one hundred contestants. Art will be provided by the talented Jenn Ortiz (who drew the contestants here on this page), with maps and other graphics by our eminently skilled videographer Camden Remington.

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Stretch Goal #1: Experimental Weapons! - $3,500

If this stretch goal is hit, the book will be expanded with a new director, map, and item set! It'll be centered on crazy experimental weapons in a bizarre, deeply unsafe underground facility overseen by an unbalanced businessman with way more ambition than sense. Check out the video above for a sense of what it'll be like, and be sure to spread the word if you want a chance to play in this awesome new setting!

Risks and challenges

As this will be the first RPG we’re officially publishing, there could be hiccups along the way. However we’ve got plenty of great people helping us, and since the text of the book itself is finished, there’s not much that can go wrong on that front.

We’ve given ourselves five months, which should be plenty of time to get things sorted. The biggest possibility for delays is if the art gets held up, although if this happens, we may commission outside artists to speed things up.

Once the layout gets done (which will in all likelihood be the first thing finished) we’ll send out the content-complete digital version to backers. This will be in both the hyperlinked HMTL format the free edition is in as well as the more traditional PDF format (which will have layout mirroring the final printed book).

As for shipping, we’ve restricted ourselves to the US only for physical rewards. We have plenty of experience sending packages and estimating shipping costs stateside, but unfortunately can’t provide international shipping at this time – non-US backers are free to back at the $1 or $10 levels for purely digital rewards, though!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $200 or more
About $200

Director: Everything in the Escapee Tier above PLUS you get to design your own custom contestant AND director - work with us to come up with your crazy schemes or have us do it for you! Includes an illustration for each.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $500 or more
About $500

Grand Leader: You get it all! Everything in the Director Tier (the book, shirt, pins, custom contestant, and custom director) PLUS you get your own custom scenario - a fully illustrated and detailed arena and all the drama surrounding it!